The Last Night of the World Summary & Analysis

A man asks his wife the question, “What would you do if you knew that this was the last night of the world?” The woman pauses, asking her husband if he’s serious. When he confirms that he is, she says that she doesn’t know, as she hasn’t given it much thought. The man pours himself a cup of coffee, listening to his two daughters playing with blocks in the parlor. The smell of the coffee is “easy” and “clean” in the evening air.

The man tells his wife that she “better start thinking about it.” Shocked, the woman says that surely he doesn’t “mean it.” He nods. She asks if he’s referring to a war, an atomic bomb, or germ warfare, but he says it is none of those things. Slowly stirring his coffee, the man says, “But just, let’s say, the closing of a book.”

The woman is confused, and the man says he’s not sure what to think either. He has a “feeling” about the end of the world, which scares him sometimes. At other times, though, he feels at peace with it. Glancing at his two little blonde girls, the man tells his wife that “it first happened about four nights ago,” but at the time, he chose not to tell her.

The man explains that he had a dream in which a voice told him that “things would stop here on Earth.” The following day, the man didn’t think much about his dream until he went to work and noticed his coworker Stan Willis staring out the window. Concerned, the man asked Stan what he was thinking about, and Stan replied that he had a peculiar dream the night before. Before even hearing about Stan’s dream, the man knew that their dreams were the same.

Stan told the man about his dream. When the man revealed that he, too, had the same dream the night before, Stan seemed unsurprised and even “relaxed.” The two of them wandered around their office building and noticed many of their other coworkers “looking at their desks or their hands or out windows.” Stan and the man talked to several of their coworkers, and all of them revealed they had the “same dream, with no difference.”

The woman asks her husband if he actually believes in the dream, and he asserts that he has “never been more certain” of anything before. She asks when the world will stop, and he tells her that the world will end in the middle of the night for them, but for other people around the world, it will happen later. It will take a full twenty-four hours for everything to end.

The woman asks her husband if they “deserve” the end of the world, but he assures her that it has nothing to do with “deserving.” The world is ending simply because “things didn’t work out.” He asks his wife why she hasn’t tried to argue with his claims about the end of the world, and she says that she has a reason of her own. He asks if her reason is “the same one everyone at the office had,” and she slowly nods.

The woman reveals that her dream happened just the night before, and that she didn’t want to say anything to her husband about it. In chatting with the other women in the neighborhood, she realized that they had the same dream too, but at the time, the woman thought it was just a matter of coincidence. She wonders why the newspaper doesn’t say anything about the end of the world, but her husband says that, since everyone already knows about the end of the world, there’s no need to tell everyone about it.

The man asks his wife if she’s scared, and she insists that she’s not, even though she “always thought” she would be. Her husband asks where the “spirit of self-preservation” is, and his wife speculates that people don’t get as worked up when they know their circumstances are logical. She says that this is one of those times—“Nothing else but this could have happened from the way we’ve lived.”

The man asks his wife if she thinks they’ve been “bad.” She says no, but they haven’t been “enormously good,” either. She thinks that’s the root of the problem: “we haven’t been very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was busy being lots of quite awful things.”

Listening to the little girls laughing in the other room, the husband says that he always assumed that people would be “screaming in the streets” once they knew for sure that the end of the world was approaching. The woman suggests that people “don’t scream about the real thing.”

The man tells his wife that the only thing he’ll really miss is his family—and seasonal changes, drinking ice water in hot weather, and sleeping. He admits he’s never even liked his work or living in the city. He abruptly asks his wife how they can sit calmly and talk about the end of the world, and she tells him that there’s nothing else they can do. The man says that she must be right, “for if there were, we’d be doing it.”

The woman wonders how everyone else in the world will spend their last night. Her husband guesses that people will spend their time “like always” by watching television, playing cards, and putting their kids to bed. The woman thinks that spending the night “like always” is actually “something to be proud of.”

Pouring another cup of coffee, the man asks his wife why she thinks the end of the world has to be tonight. She simply answers, “Because.” He wonders why it couldn’t have happened one, five, or even ten centuries ago. She says that maybe the world has to end tonight “because it was never October 19, 1969 ever before in history.” This day must be important because it’s the exact moment in which “things are as they are all over the world.” She says this is why the world must end tonight. The man realizes that there are bomber aircrafts flying over the ocean right now, and that those planes will never reach land. His wife says, “That’s part of the reason why.”

Abruptly, the man asks his wife if they should wash the dishes now. The two do so and put them away with “special neatness.” At 8:30 P.M., they put the girls to bed, leaving their lamps on and the door to their room cracked open. Afterward, the man asks his wife if she thinks the girls would want the door shut completely or “left just a little ajar so some light comes in.” The woman wonders if the girls know about the end of the world, and her husband is sure that they don’t.

Before they go to bed, the husband and wife listen to music, read the newspaper, and sit by the fireplace. They think about how other people in the world are spending their last night, “each in his own special way.” The man kisses his wife, and she says, “We’ve been good for each other, anyway.” He asks if she wants to cry, and she says no.

At 11:30 P.M., the two turn off all the lights in the house and begin getting ready for bed. When they get into bed, they remark that the sheets feel “clean and nice,” and that they are both extremely tired. Moments later, the wife jumps out of bed and goes to the kitchen. When she returns, she explains to her husband that she realized she left the water running in the kitchen sink and went to turn it off. The man laughs, and the woman does too, “knowing what it was that she had done that was funny.”

When their laughter dies down, the husband and wife lie in bed together, with “their hands clasped” and “their heads together.” After a quiet moment, they each say goodnight.